Re:U.S. may put emergency tariffs on solar imports
by mikepurvis on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @10:28AM
(#14445603)
Sure, that's the globalization ideal. But in the real world, there are a bunch of other non-market factors at play, which these kinds of policies attempt to account for:
- The low-cost remote industry may not be sustainable. It would be unwise to allow upheaval locally for what could turn out to be a short term gain (for example selling your city buses and firing the drivers because Uber is a thing).
- The industry may not be able to scale particularly well. This is why milk production is heavily regulated in Ontario—it keeps the price steady and avoids boom and bust cycles which would hurt both the consumer and producer.
- There's a non-zero cost to having the local industry fold; specialized machinery is written down and sold for scrap, entities (and sometime individuals) go bankrupt, people are out of work, etc.
- There can be sovereignty issues with being overly dependent on a foreign power for some critical resource, for example oil, food, energy.
- The cost of shipping is an unknown in the long term. Flying in produce from far away makes sense when airplanes and fossil fuel are cheap, but do we want to build our society on an assumption that that will be true indefinitely?
- The low-cost remote industry may not be sustainable. It would be unwise to allow upheaval locally for what could turn out to be a short term gain (for example selling your city buses and firing the drivers because Uber is a thing).
- The industry may not be able to scale particularly well. This is why milk production is heavily regulated in Ontario—it keeps the price steady and avoids boom and bust cycles which would hurt both the consumer and producer.
- There's a non-zero cost to having the local industry fold; specialized machinery is written down and sold for scrap, entities (and sometime individuals) go bankrupt, people are out of work, etc.
- There can be sovereignty issues with being overly dependent on a foreign power for some critical resource, for example oil, food, energy.
- The cost of shipping is an unknown in the long term. Flying in produce from far away makes sense when airplanes and fossil fuel are cheap, but do we want to build our society on an assumption that that will be true indefinitely?